


Watching You

by Crystalwren



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-10
Updated: 2005-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:51:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalwren/pseuds/Crystalwren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie watches Pellew, Pellew watches Archie, and Horatio watches them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Watching You- Archie

WATCHING YOU I- ARCHIE

I’m watching you, you bastard.

Do not think that I don’t know what you are up to. What you are planning. What is going on behind that impassive Captain’s statement worn over your features like a mask. Because I do know. People see my almost-pretty face and they assume that I am an innocent, a girl-faced boy-child, unknowing in the world. But I have been at sea ever since I was twelve years old. A crowded naval ship is the perfect breeding group for predators, the perfect place for them to hide and hunt; oh yes, I know a predator when I see one. Indeed, I have become almost an expert in identifying them. After spending so many years being a victim, it is almost a survival trait. I should be relieved that after so many years having to hide, to sleep lightly lest someone come, that for once I am not the target. But strangely, I feel even worse. Perhaps it is because this potential victim is a true innocent, someone unlikely to be able to survive the inevitable abuse. Perhaps this is the reason that my stomach churns and dread sits in my belly like a cold, leaden weight. Or perhaps it is merely because Horatio is my friend, and I fear for him.

Tell me, Captain Pellew, tell me what you see in him. Is it the soft brown hair, the even softer brown eyes? The pale skin, the long, delicate hands? The high cheekbones and sculpted mouth? The long, lean body? The sheer unearthly beauty of the man?

Tell me, what makes you want him?

What makes you watch him?

What will it take for you to stop?

It is almost unbearable. Every time he succeeds, every time he manages to pull off yet another incredibly brave and stupid stunt, your eyes gleam and your eyes darken with a savage and possessive pride. Your hands twitch, making little aborted movements towards him. You want so badly to touch him, don’t you? Thankfully, these tense and longing moments that you and he share are always above deck, in full view of the crew. That is enough to restrain your impure lusts, I think. For the time being at least. I have not doubt that you will yield to them eventually. Weak and twisted creatures such as you often have little self-control. That you have lasted so long without yielding is a credit to you, a credit to yourself as a captain. For you are a fine captain, Captain Pellew. It is a great shame that you are such an abject failure as a human being and as a man. I will never forgive you for that. Tales of the great Captain Pellew were all that kept me going in the dark times, the times that I endured aboard the Justinian. I’ll never forgive you for failing me so abysmally. It is like dreaming of meeting the King himself, and when you finally do you see that he is just a fat, balding man with trembling limbs and a sweating face. It is a terrible thing to find the man, the hero, that you worship is little better than a depraved sodomite. I will never forgive you for not living up to my expectations.

I will never forgive you for coming between me and my one and only friend.

Before Horatio stumbled into my life, white-faced and trembling and seasick, I’d never had a real friend. I got on well enough with my fellow midshipmen aboard the Justinian, but I was never close to any of them. They were all too afraid that Simpson’s attentions would somehow rub off on them, that any sort of kindness on their part would result in attracting his notice, and none of them were prepared to undergo that. Clayton was the only one inclined to even show me the simple kindness of acknowledging my existence, but I am afraid I had little time for his brand of help. The man was a drunken coward, and I cared little for him. The only thing that stirred my emotions on him either way was my abject terror that one day I would wake up and find out that I was just like him: beaten, broken, spirit washed away and gone in innumerable sips of mind-numbing liquor. Even when Simpson left us in peace for a time to try for his Lieutenants’ exam he did not change. He stayed exactly the same. It was only when Horatio came that some element of unbroken spirit rose in Clayton, prompting the pathetic wreck of a man to fatally defy Simpsons’ power over him. Horatio has that effect on people, I’m afraid. He did the same to me too. He convinced me, who was as equally pathetic and broken as Clayton, to live again. He has done everything for me. He stood up to Simpson for me; he pulled me out of that Godforsaken Spanish prison into the bright and burning light of day. He even managed to get Simpson killed, something I had been trying to do for years and had obviously never had much success at.

And now, you have ruined it all. Bastard. Sodomite. A predator of young and innocent men in your care- dare I say service? You, twisted and loathsome being, have managed to come between me and probably the only person whom I have ever really cared for, and more incredibly, cares for me in turn. You see, I warned him about you. I told him how you had been watching him. About the way you look at him. The way your hands clench into fists at the sight of him, trying desperately to restrain yourself from touching him.

He hit me.

Horatio Hornblower, the most kindest, most gentlest, most honourable man I have ever met. My only friend in the world and on the sea, hit me. Struck me hard enough across my jaw to bruise, for my teeth to snap together and catch my tongue in between and fill my mouth with the foul copper taste of blood. Afterwards, I lay there and just stared at up at him in astonishment. I could not believe that he had struck me, and by the stunned look in his eyes he had trouble believing it also. He stormed away, with my slurred and painful attempts to call him back ringing in both our ears. He did not talk to me for days after that. He met my words of apology with looks of shame and horror and finally the retreat of his back. I slunk around the Indy like I had heard my best friend had died and left me- the analogy is very close to the truth. Eventually, we seemed to met some sort of unspoken, mutual agreement and slowly we began to talk to each other again.

But the damage is done.

Horatio is simply incapable of believing any ill of you, so enamoured and worshipful is he. He would rather believe ill of me, his closet friend, than ill of his beloved captain. He simply does not know about the masks a predator can hide behind. His only experience of evil was with Simpson, and Simpson certainly never bothered with concealing his true nature. He was more about brute strength and power; there was never any finesse about him. But you, my captain, are the very soul of finesse. It is obvious that where Simpson would rape and pillage, you would prefer to seduce. And in my soul I know that the seduction of Horatio would do far more damage than a rape ever would. Horatio is my friend. It is my duty to protect him, and protect him I will. I will not give you a chance to seduce my friend, Captain Pellew. Seduction requires time and privacy, and I will not give you that. I am going to stay close to Horatio. I am not going to give him a second alone. Every step he takes, any movement in any direction will not be undertaken without my presence. Horatio is an intelligent man, but his innocence blinds him. He will not see what I am doing, and even if he does see it is unlikely that he will be able understand why. I cannot stop you from watching him, but I can stop you from coming for him. And if that does not work, if you decide that you can ignore my presence long enough to simply take what you want, there is another option I can use.

I can offer you myself.

I know that I am not unattractive to your type. Simpson was not the only man who has wanted me; he was simply the only one whom I could not refuse or fight against. And against my will he taught me a great many tricks, nauseating and perverse to be sure, but good enough to please a man who’s tastes run that way. I can use those tricks on you, Captain. I do not delude myself when I say that I can make you forget all about Horatio. The thought of what I would have to do frightens and sickens me, almost as much as Simpson ever did. But I will do it. I will protect Horatio. I will protect him from you because he is something that is pure and unsullied, and these qualities are rare enough in this dark and bitter world. But above and beyond this, I will protect him because he is my friend, and he is worth doing anything for.

He is worth it.


	2. Watching You II- Pellew

He is, quite simply, the most beautiful man I have ever seen.

When he is lying in my bed, asleep, sprawled out like a wanton Greek god with his hair loose and fanned across my pillow, I know that I am as close to perfection as a flawed mortal man like myself is ever likely to get. And I know that I am flawed; for all my crew looks to me for their lives, for all the lives I have taken, for all the battles I have won or lost, I am simply a man with a man’s weaknesses. And my biggest weakness is Archibald Kennedy.

Please believe me, I fought it for the longest time- oh, how I fought. I fought the almost overwhelming urge to follow him, undress him with my eyes, to take him into my cabin and make him mine. I did try. But in the end I’m only a man, Mr Hornblower, a frail, weak mortal man. And faced with such temptation, my weaknesses have overwhelmed me and I have been lost. I have sold my soul for the possession of another, but I cannot regret. God forgive me, I cannot.

I didn’t notice him at first; I saw him as just another Midshipman, another man, a boy really, in His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Well, perhaps that is not precisely true. I thought of him as perhaps a source of trouble on my ship, arriving as he did among the ill disciplined and poorly trained rabble from the Justinian. Indeed, double-damned in my mind, first for originating from that unlucky vessel, second for being the close friend of you, Mr Hornblower. I was certain you were trouble, and I made doubly certain to keep my eye on you.

You have proved me wrong.

Of all the young men who have served under me, you are by far the one most likely to become great in the annals of the British Navy. As time went on, it became apparent to me that this was so. I knew you were destined for greatness. I have groomed you, instructed you, tried my best to impart to you some of the knowledge and, dare I say, wisdom that I have gathered in my years of service. So proud was I of you and your accomplishments, I began to watch you in earnest. And it was then that I began to notice him. Midshipman Archibald Kennedy, your friend, young, strong, and oh so very beautiful. I can remember the first time I noticed him as something other than a faceless figure, so vividly. It is when you were both off watch, standing on deck and looking over the ocean. You turned to him and spoke something and he laughed, throwing his head back and showing off the perfect lines of his throat, red-blond hair whipping around his face. I remember being startled by the sudden irrational desire to kiss that throat, to bite it gently in love play as I gathered that soft, wild hair in my hands. And I remember being instantly horrified, because this man wasn’t a man, he was barely more than a boy! A boy under my service and in my care, something that it is my duty to protect, not to prey upon. So I throttled the thought, strangled it, smothered it, buried deeply it within the darkest recesses of my mind.

But it would not go away.

Indeed, as my own respect for you slowly grew into something resembling paternal pride, I found myself noticing him more and more. As I instructed you, tried to teach you what I knew, he was always there in the background, hovering respectfully at a distance and looking at us both with cold blue eyes. Indeed, the more I spoke to you the colder his gaze became until I found myself wondering whether it was jealousy, jealousy because of the attention I granted you. For a time I harboured the wild, irrational hope that maybe he wanted me in turn, but I soon dismissed this fond fantasy. It is for certain that he tried to draw my focus to himself, but once it was there he did not appear to want it, his whole manner becoming as chill as the ice that froze his face. Whenever I found myself looking for him I found him by your side, staring at me out of the corner of his eye, angry, resentful.

You, of course, had no idea that anything was wrong.

This went on for some time. If I wanted to see him I had only to look for you because I knew he would be there. And for a time, looking was enough. I knew that I could never have him, and to my pride, I never tried to bring him to me. My weakness remained something that only I was aware of, a fact that soothed my fevered mind, fevered with fantasies of him. Until a night came when the presence of someone standing at my cabin door was announced by the rapping sound of knuckle on wood, and God help me, that someone was he. Enough remained of my tattered pride to beckon him in with the aplomb and self importance that a Captain is supposed to possess, and to rather coldly inquire why he had dared disturb me at this hour. And he looked at me down that snub nose of his and told me that it was about you.

I know you want him, he said. I know that you undress him with your eyes. I know what you have planned for him, and I want to save him.

As I sat there with my mouth agape, speechless for the first time in years he outlined his ‘compromise’. He planned to substitute himself for you, to give himself in your place. I was mystified, trying to understand his words. Then my understanding slowly dawned. He thought that you were the one I wanted, the one I was dreaming of, the one I desired.

He thought I was watching you!

I could not help myself. I threw my head back and laughed out loud, and I saw the fair skin of his face flush with anger and embarrassment. He ground his teeth and rushed to the door, and I was barely fast enough to prevent his escape. I wrapped my hands around his upper arms, feeling the solid muscle jump beneath my fingertip, realising dimly that this boy was not really a boy but a man grown and strong, and I kissed him. Kissed him hard and kissed him soft, putting all my pent up emotions, my desire and frustration into that kiss. He accepted the kiss but did not return it, his eyes closed and a single tear trickling down his cheek. I wiped it away, and lead him by the hand to bunk. I sat him down and I knelt before him. I told him that it was not you I wanted. It never had been. I told him that you were as important to me as my own son- paternal love, full of pride, but ultimately sexless. I told him that it was he I had been watching. Him and no other. I told him that he was beautiful. I told him that he was desirable. I told him that I wanted him.

He turned his face away from me as I spoke. My words gradually faltered and stopped entirely, and I continued to gaze up at him in hope. He was near, so near to me, I could not stop myself. He smelled of clean soap and sea-salt. I placed a hand on his thigh- he jumped but otherwise remained still. I rested my hand there for a second, and he shuddered but did not push me away. Then I began to slide my hand ever so gently towards his groin, and when I reached my target he gasped and arched his back. Using all my skill, I kissed and caressed him until he relaxed in my arms, until he began to moan sweetly, until his fear of me and other men ebbed and the pleasure truly began for him.

That night, I made him mine.

As he sleeps in my bed, his lips bruised from my kisses, I cannot find it in my heart to regret my actions. He is too young, yes, a man who was but recently a boy, but he is still a man. And he may not be disposed by nature to be a lover of fellow men, but I have not mistreated him. I know he has been hurt. I have seen the scars with my own eyes, and I know better than to even lay beside him when he is asleep, let alone try to caress him. I know that that either will provoke a violent and unthinking reaction from him that he cannot control. And I have found that he simply will not take certain positions during lovemaking, no matter how much I urge him. I do not want to know any more about it. I know that if I ever do learn the name of his attacker I would be forced to hunt the scum down and punish him, and I know that that would raise questions, uncomfortable questions that I could not face lest my answer doom both my lover and myself. The world will tear us apart soon enough, and it is my wish to delay that parting for as long as I am able.

You must never learn of this. I know that as a young, idealistic man, enthusiastic in the service of your King and Navy you would have difficulties understanding what I feel for Archibald Kennedy. But I do care for him, in truth I do. And I know that in turn, he cares for you. This is why I have forbidden him ever to speak of what we have together, not to anyone and especially not you. I have seen the distaste in yours eyes and your face whenever love between two men is brought up in your presence. You cannot even make light of it as your shipmates do, such is your disgust. I am unable to foretell what your reaction would be should you learn of what Archie and I share, but I know that it would be violent and ugly. I know you would not, could not understand. Better you should never learn at all.

I know that he is not entirely happy with me. This kind of lovemaking is not part of his nature as it is mine. Perhaps it is the abuse he suffered before he came to me or perhaps he fears the ever-present risk of being caught. Whatever the reason may be there is something preventing him from completely enjoying my attentions. There is something that stops him from abandoning himself to me, from loosing himself utterly in my kisses. There is a voice deep inside of me that says it would be best to let him go, but I cannot do that. I have worked so hard for all of my life in service for others. Is it so hard to believe that maybe I might want something from the world in return? I want him. I want to watch over him as he sleeps. I want to keep him close and make love to him all night and all day. I want him to care for me. I want him to dream about me when I am not with him.

I want Archie to love me as much as I love him.


	3. Watching You III- Horatio

I did it for you, Archie.

Please do not look at me like that. I did it to preserve our friendship. Your honour. Your life. I really did not have a choice. It was my duty. Of all people, you should know that.

Please don’t weep. It is unmanly, and you have been unmanned enough. I can understand how this is shocking for you. I can understand why you are upset and surprised. But you must calm down, so that we can decide what to do now. Because we must do something. We have no choice.

Do you remember when you first came to me, so shocked and angry that your hands shook and you nearly cried? How you told me what you thought he had planned, of how his mask of civilisation had slipped to reveal the depraved monster underneath. We fought viciously, so viciously that I struck you; I was unable to believe it. The man was my hero. I felt for sure you were lying, because I simply could not accept the alternative. It was unthinkable. Afterwards, you barely spoke or ate for days. You slunk around the ship, the Indefatigable, like you had heard that Simpson himself had been told that you were unhappy and was returning from the dead just so he could cheer you up. And although we later made up and I forgave you and you forgave me, you were still depressed. And then suddenly, your depression lifted. Your eyes returned to the clear blue that I know so well, there was a lightness in your step and you seemed almost happy. Almost. But I knew you well enough to see a brittleness in your manner, something cold and dying in your heart, and slowly I began to suspect that all was not well as you had told me. When I asked what ailed you, you had respect enough for me not to lie. Instead you asked me, so humbly, not to press further, not to try to find out. I am sorry, Archie, that I could not obey. But I knew that whatever was still troubling you was so terrible, so unspeakable, that for friendships' sake I could not leave well enough alone. So I followed you. In a way that was totally foreign to my nature I slipped around the ship after you, dogging your footsteps and ducking into the shadows whenever you turned round in suspicion. You knew I was watching you. You are by nature much less trusting than I, and you knew better than to assume that I would be obedient to your wishes. It took time, but finally, you grew careless. You forgot, just for a moment, to be watchful and vigilant for my presence and I saw you. I saw you come out of the cabin, his cabin, an emblem of his authority over this ship and her men, smelling of sex and sin and depravity. I saw you take a step out from the door and turn back and smile, leaning in to accept a brief, catamite-like kiss on the lips. I saw the way he forced his tongue into your mouth, how you pretended to enjoy it. Because you did pretend Archie. I know you did. You pretended to enjoy his vile lusts, to participate in his vile pleasures because you wanted to protect me. I am eternally grateful that you have done so, and now- now I am repaying you.

Afterwards, with the image of the spectacle I had witnessed burning behind my eyelids like it was engraved there in lines of fire, I stumbled back to the small cabin that we both shared with the others of our rank. I lay upon my hammock, the motion disturbing my already unsettled stomach. I wondered how you could do it, debase yourself for him like that. I wondered what it felt like.

I wondered if it hurt.

I didn’t have to lay there alone for long, because I soon heard your step. You came in whistling, smiling, as if you had been on some pleasant errand. But this time, I knew better. The smell of sea salt that always clung to you, clung to us all, couldn’t quite cover the scent of the rut. You saw me and said something, some meaningless greeting, I do not know. I do not remember. But I do remember getting up and moving so swiftly to your side that there was no way you could have possibly avoided me. I reached out and tore your jacket from your shoulders, and while you struggled with me, your shirt as well. And there, written on the parchment of your skin, was all the proof that was needed to damn him.

To damn you.

To damn me.

To damn us all.

Passion marks, little purple bruises that are the results of violent kissing and biting during love play covered your fair-skinned shoulders. And there, at your wrists, the faint marks of rope-burn winding round and around. I am not so naive as you think me to be, Archie. I knew what the rope marks meant. He tied you down. He tied you down and raped you. And you let him. Damn you. Damn you! In my anger and horror I struck you. Once, twice, across one cheek and then the other. You, who are a strong, proud man, fell weeping to the ground and begged for my forgiveness. You begged. That was the worst part, I think. You’ve been broken once before, but it took beatings and starvation and despair. But this time, all it took was a brace of blows that would have barely made a real man flinch, and my anger. And your shame.

You have earned the right to be ashamed, Archie. You should be ashamed of what you and he did. Because it is wrong, Archie. It is against God’s Law and it is against the Articles of War in His Majesty’s Navy. But the fact that it was rape, that your pure love for me convinced you that it was right to replace me in his vile lusts, excuses it somewhat. Not all- you did go to him in some semblance of willingness. But enough to save your soul.

I don’t know about the condition of his soul, though. God will judge him, certainly. So why did I do it if I believe so firmly in God’s higher power? In any higher power? It is so painfully simple, Archie. Captain Pellew is a highly respected and successful officer. In these times of war, the honour and self-respect of a single young Midshipman, prone to fits and with his spirit broken once is barely worth the career of a captain such as he. He is a proven warrior; in the basest terms possible, you are expendable. Not he. I know that other men tend to regard me as an innocent in many ways of the world, but I am not so innocent as that. I know enough about the ways of others to know that in their eyes, you are next to worthless. At best, if I had protested on your behalf, this horrible thing would have continued. At worst, you and I would have been disgraced, our careers over, banished from the service with our reputations in tatters.

After my watch was finished I slipped down to the Captain’s cabin and rapped softly on the door. He himself opened it, smiling because he thought it was you and not I who had come knocking. He was not wearing his coat, and his shirt was open all the way to where it tucked was into his breeches. When he saw me, his smile abruptly vanished and Pellew the man became Captain Pellew of His Majesty’s ship the Indefatigable. He glared. He knew why I was there. He gritted his teeth and very courteously invited me into the warm candle-lit interior of his private domain. There was port set out on the table, with two glasses. Was the extra glass for you, Archie? The Captain did not hold on formalities. He knew that I knew, and he told me, in sharp, concise words, that what was between you and he was not my business. He told me to go back to my cabin, forget what I had witnessed. Mention it to no one. He wasn’t going to listen to me, Archie. He had no intention of hearing my pleas on your behalf. He wasn’t going to leave you alone. He wasn’t about to give you back your freedom, or your honour.

So I killed him.

I took out a knife and stabbed him. He didn’t seem to be expecting it. Certainly, the statement on his face seemed to indicate that he was surprised about something. The nerve of the man! Surely he was expecting some kind of punishment for his crimes, surely he had some sort of remorse? Or perhaps he didn’t expect retribution to come from my hands. For whatever reason, he died very easily. When he told me to leave I whipped out the long knife from the sheath tucked into the back of my breeches and slipped it between his ribs, neat as you please. He did not suffer. That is a pity, because he certainly did deserve to suffer for his crimes. However, I had neither the time nor the opportunity to indulge my outrage. If he had cried out, we would be dead now for sure.

I am sorry, Archie. I know that this must come as a shock to you. When you walked into the cabin of the former Captain Pellew for your latest assignation, I know that the last thing you expected was to see your rapist- not lover, Archie, he was never your lover- lying dead on the floor, blood on his chest and on the knife that I still held in my hands. But you are free now. We are both free. But if we want to keep our freedom we must act fast to cover this deed. If we are caught we’ll both swing for sure. You don’t want to die, do you Archie? I don’t think you do. You gave up on life once before, I refuse to accept that you would do it again. Take a candle from the candelabra and light it. I will pick up Captain Pellew and lay him in his berth, like this. Are you not glad that you don’t have to join him in that bed any more? Here. Cover him with this sheet and blanket. Like so. Yes. And now, give me that candle. I’ll use it to set fire to the bedclothes covering him, and if the fire is hot enough it will burn away the evidence of the stab wound. It will look like an accident. Ah! Do you see how easily he burns? Surely a reflection of Satan’s fires that consume him now in hell.

We have to go now, Archie. It will only take a minute or two until the smoke is noticed. We don’t want to be caught. I’ve taken the precaution of loading some bread and water into one of the jolly boats, in case the fire spreads to the rest of the ship. If we move towards it now, we can surely launch it and escape in the confusion. We can sail towards England, just you and I.

Just you and I.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

END

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is oooooooooold. And really, really amateurish. It's probably one of the first I ever wrote, back in my teenage days, aside from the unfinished Heralds of Valdemar epic I got halfway through. (No, you can't read it. All the electronic files got eaten by a virus, and what hardcopies there were I burned out of shame.) Hornblower was one of the very earliest fandoms I ever got involved in, and all in all I had a blast. Feeling kind of nostalgic now...I think I'll go did up my DVDs and watch me some Whoreatio whoops I mean Horatio.


End file.
